I don’t think the Russians would have nuked the USA. That was myth. Look at the Cuban Missile Crisis. The real danger was that the USA might nuke them. Remember the USA remains the only one who has used the bomb. The bomb in a way symbolized its accession to power. The last novel in the Edward Ware Thriller series which I now tentatively called Unlocking Trinity or The Trinity Plot stops talking about the Lawrence maps in favor of talking about Los Alamos.
My father had a job at Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory in West Mifflin, PA. He said that lots of veterans of Los Alamos came there after the war. I live about 550 miles away from Santa Fe and Los Alamos. I’m even closer to Ground Zero outside Socorro, New Mexico. Just drove past it this summer.
First Atomic Blast